Sinai Bedouin Embroidery Project - Update: September 2022

In June of 2022, with the help of generous donors, we provided initial funds to begin the  construction of a large workshop/shop that will be owned and operated by the Bedouin women living at the trailhead leading to the Cave of St. John Climacus. This location is ideal for attracting Christian pilgrims as well as hikers of other faiths who want to visit the cave of St. John Climacus and other ancient hermitages and Sinai food forest gardens in the immediate vicinity. We are now undertaking a major fundraising effort with the hope or raising the remaining funds needed to complete the construction of this building, and to equip it with new sewing machines, shelving, work tables, and other necessary items that will aid the women in their sewing and embroidery. 100% of the donations given for this purpose will be going towards completing and equipping this very important construction project.

St. Catherine's Monastery has worked to help the women of the Jebeliya Tribe for many years by providing them with sewing machines and equipment, teaching them how to improve the workmanship of their products, and helping them sell overseas. Father Moses of St. Catherine's Monastery, who was responsible for this oversight, needed to retire in 2016. To his great sorrow, no one was available to replace him. Since January 2018, we took over this task with his blessing, on the monastery's behalf. One of the goals we were asked to fulfill, was to help the women become more self-reliant and able to continue even without continuous outside help. To fulfill this request, we have been giving them new designs, inspired by the Sinai Christian heritage, that are attractive to Christian pilgrims. As pilgrims in Sinai see and become aware of these embroidery designs, there has been rapidly increasing demand for them there. In order for the women to keep up with this demand, they need better, larger facilities to work, and a much larger shop for sales. They also need the means of transferring the designs onto linen, requiring diode laser engravers and a laptop computer.  

This embroidery project currently provides work among the entire community of skilled hand-embroiderers of the Jebeliya Tribe who live in close proximity to St. Catherine's Monastery. Through the construction of this workshop/shop, sales should increase and more opportunities for work should become available, keeping the Bedouin women adequately employed, while they practice a traditional tribal art form as they care for their children and families. 

To Donate

​You went up to Sinai's holy mount, imitating Moses and devout St. John, author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, living in ascetic discipline, O glorious Paisios, and fasting as if you had no flesh, and so received from the Spirit gifts of grace divine, like the fathers and saints had received of old.

You went to Mt. Athos early on: Esphigmenou had you as a most obedient novice, O devout Paisios; and to Philotheou you brought glory. You became a brother of the Stomion Monastery up in Konitsa. Then on Sinai, living as a man like an angel, you provided for the Bedouin there.

​~Stichera from "The Lord I have Cried" for the Vespers service on the Feast of St. Paisios of Athos and Sinai.

Progress on the new workshop/shop!

To Read How This Embroidery Project Began

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